There was much talk, in the afternoon chat, about how alumni offices can use social networking services, either their own home grown sites; alumni-specific, vendor sites; or third-party, public sites like facebook.

After our presentation, I convinced our alumni director to set up a facebook group for Capital Alumni just to protect that group name. We’re not sure how we will use the group, but at least we realized that it should be used in some way.

Like you, and nearly everyone else, we’re figuring this out as we go.

The chat that followed the alumni presentations raised a number of issues that we should look forward to. Some participants hoped to organized into a group that could collaborate with the companies that run these public social networks to format and retrieve data on specific affinity groups. That would help you out a lot! Others looked to sharing data between the institutions network and the public networks. I personally hope that technology gives us users/members/alumni more control over our online identities allowing us to slip in and out of social networks of all kinds while maintaining our affinities from one to the next … if we so choose.

Watch for the transcript of that chat. Very interesting.

Facebook came to Auburn in 2004 and last I heard there are 22,000 users from our .edu domain. It has crept its way into the Major Gifts office where I work because of young people like me logging on in our spare time.

What no one here has realized before and part of what I’ve preached to our development officers is that the facebook is a treasure trove of information about future donor prospects.

Sure, recent alumni and soon-to-be graduates like me may not have the money to give now. But, as your screen/pod/skypecast pointed out, the majority of users will keep their profiles long after they are students. That means all their clubs, interests and social networks are at our disposal to aide in identifying and cultivating future donors.

Besides the information resources, Facebook is an opportunity to establish a giving atmoshpere among young alumni. Imagine a Facebook group exclusively for donors that honors them for certain levels of gifts, no matter how small. Suddenly, giving becomes popular and a whole new generation of donors has been established.

Those are my thoughts, anyway. Thanks for talking about this subject.

Thought Facebook was only for current or prospective students?
Wrong.
In their 43-minute screencast for HigherEdBlogCon, The Teeming Web, Bob Robertson-Boyd from Capital University and Dimitri Glazkov Estrada explain, among other things, how you sho…